Anastasia shook herself free of her mother's grasp. Her face went white and her mouth fell open. Her eyes became huge plates in astonishment.

"Don't you dare talk that way about my Martin!" she sputtered. "You don't know him. He is a very good, kind gentleman!"

"Gentleman, my eyelash!" retorted Lady Tremaine. "The boy is riff-raff."

Anastasia gasped.

"Riff-raff!" she shrieked. "Oh! Of all the nasty remarks. Just because Martin's not a duke or a lord - or a prince or a king or an emperor - " She glared at her stepsister. "- doesn't mean he's not worth knowing."

"Martin the baker is worth knowing indeed." Cinderella intervened. "He is a kind-hearted, hard-working fellow."

Lady Tremaine glowered at her stepdaughter.

"You stay out of this, you insolent wench."

However, Cinderella was insistent on sticking up for her stepsibling.

"This past holiday time, Martin baked a huge batch of cookies for a party at the Orphans' Home. Did you know that? And he didn't even take any money for doing that. The orphanage matron offered him a generous sum of money, but he turned it down. Did you know that?"

Lady Tremaine gave a mocking laugh.

"Well, naturally, he was involved with the orphans." She snorted. "It just stands to reason that a guttersnipe would gravitate toward other guttersnipes."

Anastasia gave a strangled cry.

"I am not going to stick around and listen to another word of this narrow-minded nonsense out of my own mother's mouth!"

"Anastasia, you are not an infant any longer and certain things have to be taken into account." Lady Tremaine shook a slender, crimson-taloned finger in her daughter's face. "When you were a little girl, Lord Gordon and I let you play with any dirt-encrusted, tangle-headed mudlark your foolish heart desired, but now that you are a marriageable young lady, it's very important that you keep suitable company."

"In other words, dukes and lords." Anastasia snapped.

"Every maiden in the Tremaine family has married nobility." Answered Lady Tremaine, buffing her fingernails on her gown. "Your great-great-grandmother married a duke. Your great-grandmother married a count. Your great-aunt married an earl – or maybe it was a marquis. Your grandmother married a baron. And as for myself, I married two lords. And now, your sister just got married to a grand duke."

"Drizella is welcome to Sir Howard." Anastasia shot back. "He's old enough to be Drizella's and my father, and he has the personality of a wood chip and a face like dirt on an old boot."

Lady Tremaine whipped a silk-and-lace handkerchief from her pocket and ran it over the huge green jewel in her brooch.

"That goofy-looking, pot-bellied, pasty-skinned pie-crust puncher you took up with makes Grand Duke Howard of Faraway seem as handsome and charming as - as Prince Owen himself."

Anastasia's blood turned to ice, then to fire. Her breath came in enraged snorts.

"Martin's complexion is not pasty." She hollered at the top of her voice. "It's snowy. And he's not that fat. And he's a very skilled pastry chef. And don't think he's goofy-looking at all. I think he's adorable."

Lady Tremaine shook her silvering head slowly.

"First of all, Anastasia." She said. "I will thank you not to scream at your mother. And second of all, if you think that funny-looking little doughnut jockey is adorable, you have a lot of growing up to complete."

Anastasia gave a derisive sniff.

"You don't know what adorable is, and you wouldn't know true love if it bit you on the bustle!"

"Good thing neither your father nor Lord Gordon are here to see what a bratty little snip you have grown up to be."

Anastasia stood up straight and tall.

"Both Lord Gordon and Father, may their souls rest in peace, would want me to settle down with a fellow I'd be happy with, and that fellow is Martin."

"Sir Howard, the Grand Duke of Faraway, has a cousin." Lady Tremaine said. "A baron. The lady he was to marry left him standing at the altar – the silly goose – and he would so like to meet a lovely maiden."

"Well, he'll have to look elsewhere because this lovely maiden is spoken for."

With that, Anastasia flounced away.